McLaren Vale sits on South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula, just south of Adelaide, where cooling sea breezes off the Gulf St Vincent meet warm Mediterranean-style days. It's one of Australia's oldest wine regions and, since the 2000s, one of its most reinvented — old bush-vine Grenache once destined for bulk wine is now some of the country's most sought-after fruit. Shiraz is still the region's backbone, accounting for over half of all plantings, but McLaren Vale's real signature is the GSM blend — Grenache, Shiraz and Mataro (Mourvèdre) — alongside increasingly serious single-variety Grenache.

McLaren Vale isn't one soil type but a patchwork of more than 40, and where a wine comes from within the region tells you almost as much as the grape does:

• Blewitt Springs — the highest, coolest corner of the region, with deep sand over clay and ironstone. Some of the oldest bush vines in Australia grow here; the sand produces perfumed, high-toned Grenache and Shiraz with fine, sandy tannins rather than power. This is where our Thistledown wines are grown →
• Seaview — ironstone and quartz soils closer to the coast, giving structured, savoury reds.
• The western terraces — terra rossa over limestone, similar in character to Coonawarra, favoured for Cabernet Sauvignon.
• McLaren Flat — red-brown earth on the valley floor, reliable and generous, a traditional Shiraz heartland.
• Clarendon — elevated hill country at the region's edge, with cooler-climate structure.